Monday, December 21, 2009

We cannot give up.

I am not a Republican, nor do I carry water for the Republican party, but when the vote in the Senate along strictly partisan lines demonstrates clearly that the Health Care Bill is owned lock, stock and barrel by the Democratic party, one can only turn to those in the opposing party who continue to struggle to prevent the moral, economic, and political damage this terrible piece of legislation would cause.

I don't know what the chances might be of defeating this bill when it goes to conference committee to resolve the differences between the Senate and House language, but that appears to be the last chance to stop it. And so what little hope we have depends on people like Representative John Boehner of Ohio, the minority leader in the House of Representatives:

“The American people have rejected the Democrats’ government-run approach to health care loudly and clearly, and it’s time to scrap Senator Reid’s bill and start over. The bill will fundamentally change something as personal and important as the relationship between a patient and a doctor, and yet Democrats are attempting to sneak the bill through before Christmas in the hopes the American people aren’t watching what they’re doing. Why? Because Senator Reid knows the more the American people find out about this bill, the more they oppose it.

“The Democrats’ government takeover of health care will increase premiums for families and small businesses, raise taxes during a recession, cut seniors’ Medicare benefits, add to our skyrocketing debt, and put bureaucrats in charge of decisions that should be made by patients and doctors. The bill also authorizes government-funded abortions, violating long-standing policies prohibiting federal funding of abortion. That’s not reform. My message to the American people is: now is not the time to give up. Now is the time to fight harder. When the American people are engaged, Washington listens. Now is the time to speak out, more loudly and clearly than ever, against this monstrosity.”

As the Wall Street Journal editors put it:

The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that "reform" has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.

P.S. While the Heath Care Bill is the Democratic party's very own Rube Goldberg gargoyle, it is also true that the House Democrat Bart Stupak will be among the heroes of this struggle -- win or lose -- as may others on both sides of the aisle in the House, especially if they manage somehow to finally scuttle the bill. Republicans and independents in their districts will have good reason to remember them fondly next election time.